P. D. James
P. D. James
Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park, OBE, FRSA, FRSL, known as P. D. James, was an English crime writer. She rose to fame for her series of detective novels starring police commander and poet Adam Dalgliesh...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth3 August 1920
thinking insulting sin
If you are proposing to commit a sin it is as well to commit it with intelligence. Otherwise you are insulting God as well as defying Him, don't you think?
believe thinking goes-on
For me, the dead remain dead. If I couldn't believe that, I don't think I could go on living.
writing thinking needs
Write what you need to write, not what is currently popular or what you think will sell.
thinking order wish
I don't think writers choose the genre, the genre chooses us. I wrote out of the wish to create order out of disorder, the liking of a pattern.
new-experiences people mind
Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.
writing world language
We who write in English are fortunate to have the richest and most versatile language in the world. Respect it.
gives god throw
God gives every bird his worm, but He does not throw it into the nest.
alzheimers tragedy disease
The great tragedy of Alzheimer's disease, and the reason why we dread it, is that it leaves us with no defence, not even against those who love us.
writing bad-writing discrimination
Read widely and with discrimination. Bad writing is contagious.
kindness may firsts
Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.
couple unhappy proud
There are few couples as unhappy as those who are too proud to admit their unhappiness.
people secret today
In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren't credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out. Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets.
years literature care
Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.
men cities violence
A man who lives with nature is used to violence and is companionable with death. There is more violence in an English hedgerow than in the meanest streets of a great city.